Browse:

Age 19 – PIED: Quitting porn has helped me a lot both directly and indirectly to be happier with myself and approach relationships in a healthier way

Age 19 – PIED: Quitting porn has helped me a lot both directly and indirectly to be happier with myself and approach relationships in a healthier way

I reached 90 days recently, and just a few weeks before my 20th birthday, which is kind of shocking to me, partly due to how fast the time has gone. At the start of the year I tried to focus on myself more, which inadvertently led to reduced porn use, mainly due to staying out of the house and spending time with others. I’ve struggled with porn use for a long time, but was made aware of the issues a few years ago after a talk at my high school.

Since then I would half heartedly try to cut down, but regardless I still progressed to more extreme porn such as bdsm, more extreme acts, and incest scenarios.

My porn use was a huge source of shame in my life, because I never truly felt like what I was doing was “ok” given I was indulging and fantasising about these scenes despite having zero sex or relationship experience and being at such a young age. I had also never wanted to actually engage in those acts with a real partner, which is where a lot of the shame came from. I had progressed to more extreme porn due to chasing the high of their novelty, and not an actual desire to experience those things.

After a few months of focusing on myself and cutting my porn use down and using only very vanilla porn I started feeling pretty happy with myself. I ended up making out with a girl for the first time, but as we progressed to second base I didn’t get hard at all, despite us trying multiple times. This was mostly due to a lot of nerves and having to focus on trying to do a lot of new stuff with my hands and mouth that I hadn’t done before, but the possible potential effect of porn was in the back of my head.

That experience gave me one very big insight; porn was absolutely nothing like what I wanted sex to be, and it never could be; and continuing to use it would only guarantee to harm me over the long term.

Porn doesn’t have much kissing, or talking. It doesn’t progress slowly, or make you feel wanted. Porn just follows that same oral-penetration position 1 – penetration position 2 – finish progression that I would skip through to numb feelings of loneliness, stress, and inadequacy. I used porn as a coping mechanism to ignore my problems in life.

I had no real urge to masturbate for a long time after that, but I’ve since done it a few times. A big part was that I was once again very busy for an extended period of time and was either tired or never home alone, as before I would often use porn when I was bored.

Quitting porn coincided with, and assisted with addresssing other issues in my life, such as no longer putting relationships on a pedestal, fixing my warped view of women and relationships, developing better friendships, developing hobbies, and improving my self esteem, which have been hugely beneficial.

I’ve had some more experience in dating and relationships since then, but nothing physical. Quitting porn has helped me a lot both directly and indirectly to be happier with myself and approach relationships in a healthier way and be more pro active in my life.